Rooftops
by Mycroft R Holmes
Summary: Two very different boys have a rooftop in common. (Steve/Tony AU.)
1. Chapter 1

Inspired by a tumblr post. Basically, there is a picture of two houses with little bits of roof under the windows, and the houses are so close that the roofs run into each other. Someone said "I BET THAT IF TWO KIDS LIVED IN THOSE TWO HOUSES THAT THEY WOULD COME OUT ON THEIR ALMOST CONJOINING ROOFS OUTSIDE THEIR BEDROOM WINDOWS AND TALK AND BE BEST FRIENDS AND FALL IN LOVE." So. It had to be done.

* * *

Anthony grabbed the stereo off his desk, dropped it on the bed, and flopped down beside it. An appropriate tape should be in it already - he couldn't actually remember what he was playing last, but going off statistics (90% AC/DC, 5% Metallica, 5% indie he would never admit to), it was a reasonable assumption. He went ahead and turned the volume to maximum, pulled his pillow over his head, and hefted the stereo on top of that. The bass line soaked through the fabric and stuffing then into his ears and almost washed out his father's voice, which kept bouncing around in there.

A sharp knock barely made its way through the sound. He groaned and lifted his hand blindly to the pause button, but didn't bother to move his head or the pillow. He liked them where they were, thanks.

A voice that was not any of the ones he had been expecting (mother, father, Jarvis) although it did, at least, have the right tone (irritated, exasperated, a touch of 'why can't he just grow up and get over this') caused him to jerk upright, tumbling the stereo rather painfully into his lap.

"Please don't turn that on after 11 PM."

He squinted into the light and saw a scrawny little blonde kid sitting on the roof directly outside the window. "You're that kid my father keeps telling me to be more like, aren't you? Sorry, I'm sure you'd prefer it if I were playing doo-wop or swing or, or Sinatra, but I like my music from this decade."

"That noise is keeping me awake from the next building over, it must be terrible for the people in the same house. You're being extremely inconsiderate."

"And you're trespassing."

"Technically, I'm - what is that sound?"

Anthony cocked his head slightly and listened. Oh. Apparently his father wasn't just in his head, after all. "No jocund health that Stark drinks today, but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell." What? Hamlet quotes are useful for distracting people with. It was either that or hitting on him, and Blondie looked straight as a flagpole.

As more words became clear through the walls, Blondie's eyebrows lowered. "Why don't you come over to my roof to discuss your choice of music and volume? Then I wouldn't be trespassing. And you would be separated from your infernal machine."

Anthony looked at Blondie (5'2'', 100 pounds soaking wet, graphite marks all over his hands - draws, probably bullied, confirmed by the way he's holding his arm) and shrugged. "Why not?"


	2. Chapter 2

That first night, they argue until two AM about whether or not Steve was trespassing. Steve points out he was in the easement; Anthony points out that what he was standing on was definitely Stark property. The discussion includes everything from Native Americans to the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. It gets briefly sidetracked through a debate on whether placing an object on someone else's property should count as trespassing; Steve demonstrates his point by throwing pinecones at Anthony's window, and Anthony retaliates by driving a remote control car all around Steve's room. This particular digression ends when the car knocks over Steve's lamp.

The second night, Steve is asleep before Anthony gets up to his room. Not that he looked to see.

The third night, they argue about clothing. Anthony says Steve dresses like his grandfather; Steve says there is never a good excuse for a mullet. (Anthony does cut it off a few days later, but insists there is no connection, and he had been meaning to do it anyway.) They spend half an hour on the relative merits of 'normal' versus skintight jeans.

The fourth night, they go back to arguing about music. Steve cites Mozart as one of the greatest composers of all time. Anthony says Mozart is boring and repetitive, and that Guns N' Roses is modern music for the modern era. You know, the one the cool people live in. They both agree Beethoven is awesome.

The fifth day is a Saturday and they argue during the day, about everything from the time Anthony wakes up when left to his own devices - well after 4 PM - to whether pigs have wings. They compete over which can recite longer stretches of Lewis Carroll and both claim to have won. Somewhere in there, Steve tells Anthony about his drawing. Anthony tells Steve about computers and building things. (Steve tells him home computers will never really be used for anything other than video games, and almost gets punched.)

The sixth day they argue about whether pianos or violins are better. Steve brings his violin out onto the rooftop and plays for Anthony; it's the longest uninterrupted period of nothing-coming-from-Anthony's-mouth in any of their arguments yet. It lasts a few moments after the final heavily-vibrated F before he shakes himself and says that all of the up-bow spiccato was out of tune and pianos don't have that problem, you just tune them every several months and never have to worry about it again. He is unfortunately unable to demonstrate for Steve the obvious superiority of non-bowed strings as the piano can't be brought up to the roof. Steve considers this to mean he has won.

The seventh day, Anthony's parents tell him he needs to quit staying up all night and sleeping through his classes all day. His father gets very loud when Anthony objects; Jarvis spends his entire afternoon trying to calm Anthony down.

Steve waits on the rooftop for two hours that night and leaves the window open for another three.

* * *

Look, I just set out to write some AU fluff. That last bit just sort of... happened. My fingers were innocent bystanders and my brain an innocent victim.


	3. Chapter 3

In which the author gives up and learns to embrace the feels.

* * *

It is four days after Anthony is forbidden from engaging in nocturnal rooftop debates that they see each other next. He gets up to his room to find Steve sitting on the bed, ankles crossed, back military-straight, determined frown on his face.

Anthony raises his left eyebrow (and his right, a little; he's working on raising them independently but hasn't quite mastered it yet). "I'm pretty sure that window was locked."

Steve jumps up from the bed too quickly and stumbles forward over the edge of the carpet. "I unlocked, I mean, I opened, I mean, I used a hacksaw blade to turn the latch… I thought…"

"Wow. Upgraded from trespassing to breaking and entering, have we?"

"I didn't actually break anything. I do, um, I do think I scratched the latch a little, but I don't think you can see…"

The flustered attitude is new to Anthony, and he doesn't think he likes it. He squints at Steve, leaning in probably further than is polite (not that he cares about that, anyhow), and examines him more closely. (Biting lower lip - very nice lower lip - nervous; hands grasping upper arms - defensive; head high - aggressive?; eyes staring fixedly, but a few inches to the right of centre - assertive but nervous?; inconclusive and confusing.)

Steve doesn't step back, though his eyebrows do come together a little closer. He swings his eyes over to rest firmly on Anthony's. "Tony?"

Anthony keeps examining Steve for a few moments before registering the name and leaning back. "What's so important it has the All-American Boy Scout taking a hacksaw to my window?"

Steve fidgets his toe, then seems to suddenly notice he's doing so and holds it deliberately still. His fingers start gripping his arm in sequence instead. "I haven't seen you in a few days. I just wanted to make sure you weren't sick, or something."

"I'm fine. I need to spend more time working on productive things. I fiddle around with unimportant stuff so much as it is, spending all night arguing in circles isn't a good use of my time."

Steve takes a step back. "Oh." He takes another, towards the window.

Anthony can't help but follow him.

"I guess it isn't, no," Steve says. "You are a genius, after all, taking all that time just talking to me is rather a waste."

Steve takes one more step. Anthony doesn't, this time. "Well, I wouldn't want to ruin your sparkling perfection, anyway. Your perfect work ethic. Impeccable manners. I bet you have your whole life planned out in a little schedule and only take breaks from working towards your perfect future to run errands for your poor, ailing mother."

"My mother's fine, thanks. And I do have a life plan, actually. Some of us can't just count on our parents and our damn shiny brains to do everything for us."

"Oh, he's cursing now! Looks like I am a corrupting influence, after all! Yeah, you should leave, get out while you still have some morals left - " Anthony's voice rises at each word as Steve gets further away. His sentence is cut off by the window sash slamming down with a rattle.

Steve leaps to his own roof, scrambles through his window, and yanks it shut behind him, without a backward glance.

Anthony's not sure what happens after that. The next thing he really notices is Jarvis gently grasping his arm and lifting him out of the space between his bed and his closet. Jarvis folds him into a hug, and he starts to cry.


	4. Chapter 4

The day after - Saturday - Anthony sets his alarm for 9AM, which doesn't seem like much but is quite possibly the earliest he's ever awoken on a weekend, in order to start thinking about how to fix his problem. He feels terrible from crying the night before - head muzzy, tongue all wrong - but reminds himself that he had worse hangovers when he was in short pants and sucks it up. (While wearing shorts. Did people really used to not wear shorts after they were little kids, or was he missing something in this expression?)

Jarvis, somewhere in the hug the night before, had told him that friendships were rarely broken forever by one fight. He has a whole lot of thoughts about that. First, he had really not been considering this a 'friendship' (friend = person with whom you share alcohol/sexual activity/your money =/= Steve) and he didn't actually feel like processing that particular word just then. But second, more importantly, this is something _broken_. Broken is good. Broken he can fix. He's good at fixing things. This isn't the world ending for no apparent reason just because he said some things to some random person who's never done anything but argue with him but happens to play violin like he's Orpheus or something and has a distracting jawline. This is a problem to be solved.

Steve has been up for a while, by nine o'clock. He's gotten showered and dressed, started a load of laundry, and made breakfast. He's also taken the batteries out of the smoke alarm after he set the hot pad on fire; taken all of the laundry back out of the washer when he realised (too late) that, after carefully separating the darks and the lights, he had put both piles in at once; and put his shirt back on - right side out this time. He's been a bit distracted.

Anthony's not exactly the sort of person he normally makes friends with, but then he doesn't normally make friends. (Although actually, come to that, Anthony and Bucky would probably get on a little too well.) And though Anthony is arrogant, opinionated, insufferable, and possessed of entirely wrong-headed ideas on more or less every topic under the sun, he's also, well, Anthony. Looking at nights over the next week and picturing them not including heated debates that get nowhere but go there with gusto is not appealing at all.

At 10AM Anthony is feeling his brain start to overheat. He's determined that he should probably apologise in some fashion, but the only two types of apologies he knows are 'I'm sorry, sir, I'll try to do better next time' and 'I swear I was intending to call you in the morning but…' Neither of these seems entirely appropriate.

Steve, meanwhile, has abandoned any attempt at housework or homework or any kind of productivity at all and is sitting halfway up the stairs staring at his sketchpad. It seems to be full of Anthony: not just the drawings of him (cross-legged in the scattered entrails of a computer, sprawled across his bed, on the edge of the roof with that look he'd had when Steve played violin for him) but all the rest too. The caricature mullet-person, the logos for bands he's never had the slightest interest in, the car smashing through the remains of a lighthouse, the winged pigs and slithy toves. Anthony is everywhere.

11AM finds them both leaving their houses: Anthony over the back fence and into the alley, and Steve through the front door, carefully locking it behind him.

Noon. Anthony crawls out of his window to see Steve just opening his own. They stare at each other. Then, Anthony slowly steps to the edge of his roof and holds his arm out to Steve over the chasm between.

"I got you these."

Steve blinks at the monstrosity in Anthony's hand.

"Are those flowers?"

"I panicked."

"Do you think you got enough?"

Anthony looks at Steve over the enormous, completely tasteless bouquet. "I grabbed one of everything. I don't know. Did I?"

"I'm allergic to half of those."

"Oh, hell, I knew there was something - "

"Tony?"

Anthony pauses in turning to shove the flowers gracelessly back through his window.

"They're beautiful. My mother will love them in her room. I got you something, too."

He steps out of his window and holds his offering out to Anthony.

"Chocolate. I might have panicked a little too. It has ginger bits. It was the fanciest chocolate I could find at the store."

"I hate ginger."

Anthony reaches his free hand just a little further so that their fingers touch, and grasps the chocolate bar. "But you don't. How about I eat the chocolate, and you get the ginger pieces I take out?"

Steve watches their fingers, memorises them, the tip of Tony's pinky resting lightly on his middle finger, the pad of Tony's thumb on the joint of his, the oil under Tony's fingernails matching the charcoal under Steve's, because he already knows what's going to fill his next sketchbook, and he wants to make sure he gets it right. He nods.

"Just let me put that ridiculous mistake of horticulture in a vase. Then we can talk about how anyone could possibly not like ginger. Don't go anywhere."

Tony sits down on the roof. His eyes crinkle and his lips rise in a beautiful, warm, delighted smile. "I won't."


End file.
